Amanda Knox shares an agent with Obama, Clinton and Blair

Seattle student takes on Washington lawyer Robert Barnett to get her a book deal

LAST UPDATED AT 08:44 ON Tue 6 Dec 2011

TWO MONTHS after she was finally cleared of murdering her room-mate Meredith Kercher in Italy, Amanda Knox has hired the Washington lawyer who helped get millions for the autobiographies of Tony Blair and Bill Clinton to do the same for her.

He is Robert Barnett of Williams & Connolly. He is not expected to secure the 24-year-old Seattle student quite the sort of deal he can achieve for a world leader, but she can certainly expect to earn $1m-plus for the story of her long fight for justice in Perugia.

Barnett's client list is legendary. It includes three living US presidents - Barack Obama and George Bush as well as Clinton – and female authors as diverse as Sarah Palin, Katharine Graham and Shania Twain. Foreign dignitaries on his books include the Prince of Wales, Queen Noor of Jordan and the late Benazir Bhutto.

As The Daily Telegraph reports, Barnett is also a major power broker in Democratic politics. During election campaigns, "he is often brought in to coach Democrat presidential candidates ahead of debates with Republican opponents".

If any New York publishers were in doubt about the worth of Knox’s story, they won’t be now.

A spokesman for the Knox family was unable to confirm whether Amanda would write her own book. But it is thought likely she will write it herself and may even have made a start in jail.

Her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, who was convicted along with Knox and also freed in October, is going his own way with his autobiography, signing up with the Seattle-based literary agent Sharlene Martin.

"He's never really spoken about that night and this is his opportunity to do so," Martin told CNN. "There's much more to Raffaele than what the world has seen. He is an amazing young man."

She is now looking for a suitable ghost writer for Sollecito. Candidates must speak fluent Italian.